Harris G. Warren, the dean of Paraguayan historical studies in North America, stated only a few years ago that very little attention had been given to the study of rural Paraguay, even though one must become acquainted with the countryside to understand fully this nation’s people. Almost immediately, scholars began to repair that deficiency. The most recent contribution to Paraguayan rural studies—and a magnificent one—is this exhaustive economic study by Jan Kleinpenning. Henceforth, no work on modern Paraguay will be complete without reference to this volume.
The War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) left Paraguay in economic, political, and social ruins. Politicians of the Liberal Era (1870-1932) embarked on the path of national reconstruction accompanied by all the intellectual baggage of nineteenth-century Latin American liberalism. In the quest for economic development, this republic became a supplier of raw materials such as yerba mate, timber, tobacco, quebracho, and cattle products to the outside world. Immense tracts of national lands were reserved for foreign companies and a small elite. The Paraguayan economy rapidly became captive to foreign interests. The campesino was reduced to near-serfdom and domestic agriculture neglected—even repressed—in the drive for export earnings.
Each of the principal extractive industries receives an individual chapter here, as do topics such as subsistence agriculture, internal colonization, and foreign immigration. Although they are rather depressing themes, the alienation of state lands and the peasants’ ensuing lack of access to even small agricultural holdings are well researched. The author pulls no punches in analyzing the attitude of the national elite toward the campesinos. Throughout this 60-year account recurs an upper-class callousness toward the Paraguayan peasant—a scorn and deliberate neglect justified by the laissez-faire economic policies of this era, as well as by some rather peculiar social and racial views. To understand the turmoil in the countryside after the Chaco War of the early 1930s, one must now look first to this book.
Given the magnitude of the task—some 60 years of economic history—the author wisely decided to concentrate on secondary materials available in the Río de la Plata and Europe. He mined both common and hard-to-find data sources. The tables and statistics presented are another strength of this study. One can quibble about the somewhat ponderous style and some infelicitous phrasing (which may well be a result of translation problems from the original Dutch), but these are very minor faults in light of the work’s obvious contribution to Paraguayan studies.
Kleinpenning is to be commended not only for this excellent study, but also for pointing the way for other needed studies on liberal Paraguay. An obvious one that leaps to mind would be a social history of the Paraguayan campo. Another: the origin and development of the Paraguayan elites of this era—elites, it must be emphasized, who continue to play a significant role in the Paraguayan society and economy. Yet another would be a study of Argentina’s public and private economic policies directed at its neighbor. Kleinpenning has planted the signposts; it is now up to other scholars, Paraguayan and foreign, to carry forward the research.
